Peggy Noonan slams Steve Kroft

2/8/13 9:08 AM EST

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan takes a meat cleaver to Steve Kroft, the "60 Minutes" co-host, over his recent interview with President Obama and now-former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.

"The Kroft interview was a truly scandalous example of the genre," she writes. "It was so soft, so dazzled, so supportive, so embarrassing. And it was that way from the beginning, when Mr. Kroft breathlessly noted, 'The White House granted us 30 minutes.' Granted. Like kings."

Kroft, Obama's go-to interviewer since the early days of his first presidential bid, has been roundly criticized since the interview aired nearly two weeks ago, and even made an effort to defend himself against his critics. Noonan is a little late to the party in that regard, but she comes in swinging harder than her predecessors.